The firehouse bedrooms were all heavily soundproofed, with individual alarm speakers in each one. That way, the people who weren’t on shift could sleep soundly if they needed to, while those who were on-call could hear the alarm. Taylor slipped behind me and closed the door so the second-shift guys wouldn’t hear the crying.
“Aaand, you’re not so cute anymore.” I held the baby out to Derek.
He kept his arms crossed. “Why would I take him?” he demanded.
“I don’t know. What am I supposed to do?”
We both turned to Taylor.
“Don’t look at me, I’m the youngest child! I never had to change anyone’s diapers.”
“Is that the problem?” Derek asked me. “He needs to be changed?”
I pulled open his diaper an inch, and immediately recoiled. “Ugh. Yep. It’s a diaper problem. Oh my God. How can something so cute create a smell soterrible?”
“Do we have diapers?” Taylor asked. “There’s no way we have diapers lying around the station, right?”
Derek grabbed his keys from the bedside table. “Sal’s General Store is closed at this hour, so I’ll have to drive up to the Walmart in Fresno. I’ll be back with supplies.” He pointed at me. “Keep the baby in here, and don’t let the others know about him.”
When the door closed behind Derek, I stared at the whimpering baby in my arms. Suddenly I was the one in charge of the situation. It was an unnerving feeling. The most experience I had with babies was holding my sister’s kid for about thirty seconds at a time before handing him to someone more maternal.
And right now, Anthony was still crying. The sound triggered something in my brain, like nails being scratched on a chalkboard.
“What do we do?” Taylor asked me.
I looked around. “Chief has a private bathroom. Let’s get this little guy cleaned up.”
The next ten minutes were a comedy of incompetence. I peeled the dirty diaper off Anthony and tossed it into a trash bag, which Taylor quickly double-tied and hid inside the bathroom cabinet. Then we used normal toilet paper to clean up the poor baby. That wasn’t really adequate, cleanliness-wise, so we got the water from the sink faucet nice and warm. Using four hands, we flipped Anthony over and stuck his butt under the drizzle of water.
Anthony liked this, and let out a flurry of giggles while we moved him back and forth until his little baby tushy was clean.
“Acting as a baby bidet wasn’t what I expected when I left the movie theater,” I muttered.
“Oh, yeah! How’d your date go?” Taylor asked.
“It actually wentamazing,” I replied. “Clara is… She’s something special. Weclickedin a way I’ve never clicked with someone before.”
“Aw, man. That’s awesome.” Taylor gave me a pat on the shoulder, realized his hand was wet, and then shrugged. “Man. I’m still kind of jealous you asked her out first.”
“You snooze, you lose.”
“Did you mention…” Taylor hesitated. “You know. What the three of us talked about?”
My stomach sank. I’d had such a good time with Clara that I had forgotten all about it.
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“What do you think she would say?” Taylor insisted. He was younger than Derek and me, and his eyes were wide and excited. “I know that’s a weird thing to suggest to a girl, but… Do you think she’d go for it?”
“I have no idea,” I said, which was the honest truth. I wasn’t even sure ifIwanted to go for it. “But for now, we have more important things to worry about.”
I hefted Baby Anthony and dried him off with a towel. He squirmed a little bit in my hands, but he wasn’t very strong. Not yet, at least. We wrapped him in one of Derek’s T-shirts and did our best to tie it securely. It wasn’t a diaper, but for now it would have to do.
It’s just for tonight,I told myself.We can handle a baby for one night.
6
Clara